The best TV shows on BritBox to watch now

The streaming service boasts an impressive line-up of British television to choose from.

BritBox has stolen our hearts during lockdown, with the relatively new streaming service providing a healthy dose of nostalgia and a mix of comedies and serious dramas.

The streamer is a collaborative effort between the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, and it brings together the best content from those broadcasters for the price of £5.99/month.

Shows available to watch as boxsets include the likes of Downton Abbey, Midsomer Murders, Gavin & Stacey, Wolf Hall, and The Vicar of Dibley, with more shows set to join their ranks on the platform.

Read on for the best BritBox television picks from the RadioTimes.com staff, from Love Island to Miss Marple.

The Vicar of Dibley

This sinfully funny sitcom was one of our top Lockdown Binges earlier in the year, and with good reason – Dawn French answers all our prayers as Geraldine Granger, a left-leaning vicar and bonne vivante who rocks up to the sleepy village of Dibley and turns it upside down.

The series first aired back in the mid-90s when female vicars were still a novelty, but new viewers will find that the show still provides laughs aplenty, alongside sneaking in some still-prescient messages about sexism and body positivity.

The sitcom also features a cast of memorable and eccentric characters. Watch on BritBox. Continue reading

The Trip to Greece Is the Final, Most Despairing Film Yet

Amid all the decadent food and Michael Caine impressions, the four-part series has always had a darker edge.


By Bilge Eberi  / Vulture

My grandfather, who died several years ago at the age of 98, was a Turkish archeologist who specialized in ancient Hellenic ruins. He spent almost half a lifetime digging up a long-forgotten Greek town on the Aegean coast of Turkey, a site that happened to be right next to a coal-mining facility. It both tickled and saddened him to see the old world juxtaposed with the new, timeless Greek columns and graves framed against huge piles of black, black coal. He wasn’t much of a romantic, but he did love the poetry and majesty of myth. When I was a child he’d glance out over the horizon, at the ships and sailboats passing in the blue distance, and tell me about how through these very Aegean waters had sailed the navies of Paris and Menelaus. He loved to enliven the everyday with evocations of the ancient world.
(He was obsessed with Troy, and spent years writing a book about it.) I, a snot-nosed kid for much of this time, paid only scant attention to his stories.
Only later did I realize what a gift he was giving me.

So, weirdly, I was reminded of my grandfather as I watched The Trip to Greece, the fourth and final installment of the film and TV series following Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as they make their way around the hotels and tourist spots and fine-dining establishments of the world. This film (which actually begins in Turkey, in the area around Troy) opens and ends with words from The Odyssey, and at various points evokes the stories of Odysseus and Aeneas as Coogan and Brydon eat, joke, imitate, and niggle their way through Greece. The parallels are inexact and rough, and to director Michael Winterbottom’s credit, the film doesn’t try too hard to adhere to any kind of mythic structure. But what does remain at the end of this final and most despairing of the Trip entries is a sense that the past is never quite done with us, that today’s heartbreaks and passions and tragedies are merely variations on ancient patterns. Continue reading

The Trip To Greece Q&A

Ever since Seinfeld, story arcs in comedy centred on nothing in particular have grown to become something of a genre standard. No show took that quite as literally as The Trip, starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, which first aired on BBC Two in 2010. The original conceit, and the comedy, were simple: two well-established comedians (and quasi-friends) have expensive meals at fancy Lake District restaurants while doing impressions of the likes of Michael Caine, Marlon Brando and Ronnie Corbett. On paper that doesn’t sound like comedy gold, but something in the chemistry of Brydon and Coogan’s easy banter and Michael Winterbottom’s skilful direction made for an immediate hit.

Sadly, that journey – or, this time, that Odyssey – looks to have reached its conclusion. Ten years, four series and three more countries Continue reading

Rob Brydon reveals when mockumentary The Trip will return with Greece-set series

Rob Brydon

Rob Brydon has revealed when fans can expect to see the new series of The Trip. It’s been over two years since Brydon and Steve Coogan were last seen on screen together – in 2017’s The Trip to Spain.

The Trip – co-created by Brydon, Coogan and director Michael Winterbottom – began on BBC Two in 2010. The series saw them embark on a restaurant tour of northern England.

Later outings saw them repeat the formula in Italy and Spain.

In the series, the actors play fictional versions of themselves.

This year, Coogan reprised the character of Alan Partridge for This Time, a BBC series that was acclaimed by critics and viewers alike.

Read the full interview with Brydon here.

The Trip To Greece will be broadcast on Sky One and NOW TV in Spring 2020. Gavin & Stacey returns for a one-off special on Christmas Day on BBC One.

Source: Rob Brydon reveals when mockumentary The Trip will return with Greece-set series | The Independent

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